Anti-Islamic bigotry persisted inside US military training despite official condemnation

Evidence

Repeated complaints about training courses with anti-Islamic content led the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, to order a comprehensive review of these courses in April 2012 to expunge bigoted materials. … One of the most extreme examples was a course for senior military officials that dismissed Geneva Convention protections for Muslim civilians and contemplated Hiroshima-like destruction of Islam’s holy cities. … Another instance was a target at a Navy SEAL firing range depicting a Muslim woman wearing a head scarf and firing a gun, with framed verses from the Qur’an over her shoulder; this was removed by Navy officials after protest by an American Muslim group. … While top military officials clearly regard Islamophobia as incompatible with American foreign policy and military doctrine, the presence of anti-Islamic prejudice in the military is evidently still a problem, to judge from notorious recent events involving US troops abusing bodies of Afghan fighters and burning Qur’ans. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 34

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Asad-style critiques of the ‘war on terror’ discourse and to the reader’s broader project on state-sanctioned Islamophobia. — connects to: US military schools taught future leaders a genocidal total-war doctrine against Muslims — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 749